Political/Community Experience: Ward 3 councilman from 1995 to 1999, ran again for City Council in 2011, receiving 25 percent of the vote in a four-way race. While on council, served as a liaison to the Museum Advisory Board, the Transportation Advisory Board, the Planning and Zoning Commission, and the Longmont Area Economic Council, as well as on the board of the National League of Cities. Currently president of the Longmont Artists' Guild and serve on the board of the Longmont Jazz Association. Past president of the Neighborhood Group Leaders Association and The Shores Homeowners Association, as well as finance committee chair for Boy Scout Troop 65 out of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.

Name a person you admire and explain why? Ralph Carr, the governor who took it on the neck because he opposed the internment of the Japanese in World War II. I think he took a brave, positive stance and I admire him for that.

As the city recovers from the St. Vrain Flood, what steps should Longmont take to mitigate similar disasters? What opportunities, if any, does this present for development of the river corridor? The city is undertaking a master plan for the river corridor. The plan needs to have a keen eye towards mitigation of the flood plain and an economic component ... development of river-walk with shops, restaurants, galleries, and planned foremost with flood mitigation in mind.

Longmont has gone to court to condemn Dillard's, in hopes of restoring a blighted Twin Peaks Mall. Did the city take the right steps or does this set a bad precedent? Now that the process is under way, what, if anything, would you do to resolve the situation? Unfortunate situation ... all parties involved should have worked much harder to keep Dillard's as the major anchor of the mall ... the current plan without Dillard' s is a day late and a dollar-short ... a food market, Walmart, and a movie theater does not a mall make ... the city and the developer need to go back to the drawing board and develop a new plan for the mall with a maximum of city resident input ... it should have a convention center, four-star hotel, performing arts center and gallery, as well as some type of athletic component be it a pool/ice rink ... and design with the use of native sandstone.

The city should have bought the mall out-right when the original owner was going bankrupt for less than $10 million rather than agree to back the current clown for $27.5 million ... bad foresight ... no vision ... no planning ... no grasp of economic reality.

Longmont is now in a pair of oil- and gas-related lawsuits, one over its updated regulations and the other over a voter-adopted "fracking" ban. What does the city need to do to bring this issue to the best conclusion possible? We've saddled that horse (the law suit) and now we need to ride it to the end. Citizens told us what they want and now we need to defend it. Anything else would be wrong.

LONGMONT -- So far as Ron Gallegos can tell, Longmont is missing a trick.

For the former Longmont city councilman, it's a matter of simple math. Rocky Mountain National Park draws more than 3 million visitors a year. Longmont is practically on the front doorstep of "the park." Therefore, he concludes, some of those visitors should be Longmont's -- and would be, if the city pushed harder to capture tourism and the convention trade.

"We've got a beautiful physical location," said Gallegos, one of five candidates for two at-large seats on the Longmont City Council this November. "And given how we're located between Boulder, Fort Collins and Greeley, there's no reason we couldn't draw conventions from all of them."

But Longmont still lacks a "postcard" site, Gallegos said -- something that captures the city, the way the Space Needle does for Seattle -- and it's missed chances. During the 2011 election, Gallegos urged the city to buy the Twin Peaks Mall outright, raze it, and start fresh, including a new hotel and convention center in the design.

Now, he said, the city's in the middle of a far more expensive condemnation action for a result he considers less satisfying. Having Sam's Club, Whole Foods and a movie theater as the anchors simply isn't good enough, he said.

"We could have picked (the mall) up probably for $9 million to $10 million," Gallegos said. "Now we're on the hook for $27 million. ... It's an opportunity that's not going to come along again for about 25 years, so why not dream big?"

Gallegos said the recent flood also underlined a critical need in Longmont for affordable housing, as well as for jobs that offer a living wage to make that housing affordable.

"I'm not advocating outright socialism, but I think we need to give a thought to the members of our community who are less fortunate," he said.

Overall, he said, he didn't consider himself left-wing or right-wing, but "communitarian."

"If I'm walking down the street and I run into a pothole, it doesn't say 'I'm a liberal pothole' or 'I'm a conservative pothole,'" Gallegos said. "It says 'I'm a Longmont pothole and I need a Longmont solution.'"Scott Rochat can be reached at 303-684-5220 or srochat@times-call.com.

MacIntyre feels Colorado is capable of making run at bowl gameCU BUFFS FALL CAMPWhen: 29 practices beginning Wednesday morning 8:30-11 a.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday practices are open to the media and public next week. Full Story

MacIntyre feels Colorado is capable of making run at bowl gameCU BUFFS FALL CAMPWhen: 29 practices beginning Wednesday morning 8:30-11 a.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday practices are open to the media and public next week. Full Story

It didn't take long for Denver music observers to notice Plume Varia. Husband and wife Shon and Cherie Cobbs formed the band only two years ago, but after about a year they started finding themselves on best-of lists and playing the scene's top venues. Full Story